Growing Echinacea Purpurea

This wonderful herb I use as a flower essence for the spleen meridian, however, I have been growing it for the last fifteen years and can honestly say that it is one of my most favourite plants.

There is another variety of Echinacea that is used in the medicinial herb repertoire, being Echinacea
Angustifolia. The root of this plant is the most prized section of the plant, and like the purpurea the whole plant is usable. It is much harder to grow and not quite as splendid visually above the ground, the plant is lower growing and the flowers tend to be smaller. I unfortunately did not have much success growing the angustifolia.

If the reader is keen to grown Echinacea Purpurea now is a good time to germinate the seed. The natural habitat of this plant is an area that has a cold winter, under snow is the norm. In order then to trick the seed into germinating, it needs to feel that it is coming to spring from a very cold base. I keep my collected seed in the fridge, so if you have just obtained some seed, keep it in the fridge for up to six weeks before germinating. I also use a pendulum to check the viability of all seeds I germinate. The actual seed is small black and encased in the cone shaped outer capsule. If you are given a seed head, the needles around the cones can be thrown into the seed raising mix to break down, but the seed is the cone shaped capsules. Another way to test is to chew a seed cone, the tingly taste will give an indication as to the strength of the seed.

As you can see from the photo the plant is quite magnificient. It is a bi-annual plant and given conditions that is feels happy in, it will self seed. Depending on your growing conditions, let some of the strong flowers go to seed (about six months after planting). If you wish to grow a large number of plants, you can use polystyrene boxes and start them off this way, they are easy to separate when you are ready to plant out, and are very tough. The whole plant is usable, it can be used fresh in teas, or dried for future use, the needles are quite sharp so for handling purposes if using the flowers, cut them up before they start to go to seed.
Happy gardening.